pyreadstat not honoring format for strings longer than 255 bytes

[maver1ck]

Describe the issue

I'd like to set up properly data format for strings. The problem is with format 'A500' (where number is bigger than 255) However format is properly set if there is a value in df that has proper length.

To Reproduce

import pyreadstat
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Text5': ['0123456789'],
      'Text50': ['0123456789'],
      'Text500': ['0123456789'],
      'Text500A': ['0' * 500],  
    })
variable_format = {'Text5': 'A5', 'Text50': 'A50', 'Text500': 'A500', 'Text500A': 'A500'}
pyreadstat.write_sav(df, 'bug.sav', variable_format=variable_format)

Result in SPSS.

File example

File created by above code

Expected behavior

Column Text500 should have width 500.

Setup Information:

How did you install pyreadstat? pip Platform: macos Python Version: 3.12 Python Distribution: brew Using Virtualenv or condaenv? venv